Marine receives reduced rank in desecration hearing

Amanda Wilcox, Jacksonville Daily News

Wednesday

Jan 16, 2013 at 12:01 AMJan 16, 2013 at 7:16 PM

JACKSONVILLE — A Camp Lejeune Marine who admitted to urinating on a Taliban corpse in 2011 left his special court-martial Wednesday with a sentence much less severe than what the judge hearing the case wanted to give.

JACKSONVILLE — A Camp Lejeune Marine who admitted to urinating on a Taliban corpse in 2011 left his special court-martial Wednesday with a sentence much less severe than what the judge hearing the case wanted to give.

Staff Sgt. Edward Deptola, of 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, pleaded guilty to two articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice: Article 92, dereliction, for failing to supervise junior Marines, wrongfully posing for unofficial photographs with human casualties and wrongfully posing for unofficial photographs with human casualties on a tank; and Article 134, general article, for urinating on the body of a deceased enemy combatant and wrongfully firing a recovered enemy machine gun.

A pretrial agreement between the defense and prosecution meant Deptola’s sentence — a reduction in rank to sergeant — had already been dealt prior to entering the courtroom.

After seeing an overwhelming amount of evidence — including eight still photos of Deptola posing with corpses, 12 videos from the day of the incident and four news articles with reader comments attached — Lt. Col. Nicole Hudspeth, the judge in Deptola’s case, wanted to sentence Deptola to a reduction to the rank of E-1, six months confinement in the brig, a bad conduct discharge and a $5,000 fine with an additional six months in the brig if he failed to pay that fine.

However, due to the sentencing limitations agreed to in the pretrial agreement, Deptola could receive a punishment no harsher than a reduction to the rank of E-5.

Lt. Gen. Richard Mills, the Marine Corps general officer responsible for determining disciplinary action in the desecration cases, has 30 days to either accept or overturn the sentencing agreement.

Hudspeth, who was not allowed to see the sentencing limitations before handing out her sentence, appeared frustrated when finally being allowed to read over the pretrial agreement.

“You have walked into this courtroom with exceptional protection,” Hudspeth said to Deptola.

Deptola was also charged with dereliction of duty by failing to require junior Marines to wear their personal protective equipment, failing to stop and report the misconduct of junior Marines, failing to report the negligent discharge of a grenade launcher, failing to stop the indiscriminate firing of weapons and failing to stop the unnecessary damaging of Afghan compounds, to which he pleaded not guilty.

Part of the pretrial agreement allowed the additional dereliction charges to be dropped as long as Deptola pleaded guilty to the desecration charges and agreed to be a witness in two other cases of Marines facing similar charges for human desecration.

Deptola is the fifth Marine to be punished for his involvement in the video of Marines urinating on dead Taliban corpses, which was published to YouTube last January and triggered widespread anger.

The incident took place in Sandala, Musa Qala District in Helmand Province, Afghanistan in July of 2011. Deptola, a scout sniper platoon sergeant, told the court Wednesday that he and his team killed the three corpses seen in the video during an ambush, then posed for what he called “trophy photos” with the corpses, videotaped urinating on them and posed for more pictures after putting the bodies on a tank to be transported.

Marine officials said there are other pending cases related to the incident and added they would not discuss evidence or specific findings in those investigations.

Contact Daily News Military Reporter Amanda Wilcox at 910-219-8453 or amanda.wilcox@jdnews.com. Follow her on Twitter @AWilcox21.

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